Troubleshooting

This page covers a number of common problems and how to debug them.If this doesn’t help you, look in theGitHub issuesfor similar issues (also look in the closed issues).

If you end up opening a new issue, please include (relevant) settings and adebug log.

Debug mode

In debug mode, SublimeLinter prints additional information to Sublime Text’s console.Among other things it will list if a linter was able to run and its output.

To enable this mode, set"debug" totrue in your SublimeLinter settings.

The linter doesn’t work!

When a linter does not work try to run the program from the command line(Terminal in Mac OS X/Linux, Command Prompt in Windows).If it does not work there, it definitely won’t work in SublimeLinter.

Here are the most common reasons why a linter does not work:

  • The linter binary or its dependencies are not installed.Be sure to install the linter as documented in the linter plugin’s README.

  • The linter binary is installed,but its path is not available to SublimeLinter.Follow the steps inDebugging PATH problems below.

Debugging PATH problems

In order for SublimeLinter to use linter executables, it must be able to find them on your system.There are two possible sources for this information:

  1. The PATH environment variable.

  2. The"paths" setting.

Indebug mode SublimeLinter prints the computed path to the console.If a linter’s executable cannot be found, the debug output will include acannotlocate<linter> message.

A linter may have additional dependencies (e.g. NodeJS) that may be missing.The console should also have information about that.

We noticed some users having an issue where a linter couldn’t find “node” eventhough “node” is in their $PATH. If you’re having this problem you can remedyit by patching the “env” for that linter in your settings like so:

{"linters":{"eslint":{"env":{"PATH":"/usr/local/bin/"}}}}

Finding a linter executable

If a linter executable cannot be found, these are steps you can take to locate the source of the problem.

First check if the executable is in your PATH.Enter the following at a command prompt, replacing<linter> with the correct name (e.g.eslint):

# Mac OS X, Linuxwhich<linter># Windowswhere<linter>

If this fails to output the executable’s location it will not work.Make sure the executable is installed and if necessary edit your PATH.How to edit your PATH strongly depends on you operating system and its specificconfiguration. The internet is full of HOWTO’s on this subject.

Adding to the “paths” setting

If you cannot rely on the PATH environment variable, paths can be configuredin SublimeLinter’s settings.

For example, let’s say you are usingrbenv on macOS.To add the path~/.rbenv/shims you would change the"paths" setting like this:

{"paths":{"linux":[],"osx":["~/.rbenv/shims"],"windows":[]}}